Friday, March 04, 2011

A Message from the Academy of Farts and Sinuses

Did I just hear the distant bleating of a rump trumpet? Then we must be in hell or among the tenured, where the two ends of the digestive tract are routinely reversed -- where pompous gasbags talk trash and pull facts from their behind. The technical term is zonal confusion. The colloquial term is bullshit.

But first had each of them stuck out his tongueBetween his teeth, as signal to their leader,And he made a trumpet of his rump. --Canto XXI

Upton notes that Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise all correspond to states of being. Although it certainly smells like something crawled up and died here, if it's too much of a leap, you needn't regard them as postmortem, since their odor is readily detectable in this world.

The "higher states of being" -- those associated with Purgatory and Paradise -- "are higher in every sense: they are closer to Reality" (Upton). Thus, as we travel further hellward, we drift further and further from the Principle, but draw closer to Hell's principle. The former is O, or the "Sovereign Good," while the latter is....

Well, first of all it is Ø, which means that it is not something positive, but rather, the negation of O, whatever that might mean.

As we venture down into the lower vertical, O at first becomes blurry and out of focus. But eventually we cross a threshold, in which its inverse -- Ø -- begins to acquire a kind of "solidity."

However, unlike O, it is not a translucent solidity but a dark and dense one. The darkness and density then become a kind of pseudo-reality, and it is this reality to which the materialist fleedom flighter clings and calls "courage" or "clarity." It is the false sobriety of someone who lives in a dry county in which no grog is available anyway. Suffice it to say that someone who is drunk on God is infinitely closer to reality than someone who is sober on matter.

Ironically, nothing is as it appears to be in Hell, which is why deconstruction -- or absolute relativism -- is such an adequate symbol of it. For the deconstructionist, there is no stable reality, only the interpretation they give it.

This elevates deconstruction above construction -- or, let us just say destruction above creativity. In practical terms, it elevates an ordinary feminist nag above the Bible or Shakespeare by revealing the "patriarchy" or "oppression" of these texts. But what the feminist actually demonstrates is her virtuosity on the rump trumpet.

Since the lower realms are only pale reflections of reality, we might think of them as existing in a negative space. If Heaven is +12, then Hell is -12. Importantly, the downward descent is in one sense a "dissipation" and loss of substance and (truth) force.

But in another sense, the further away from O, the more it becomes a kind of persecutory presence or shadowy recollection. Thus, as Upton describes it, the closer one gets to the "most hideous, most hellish parts [of Hell], the areas where existence is the most unbearable, the nearer one has come to letting the good break through."

This is why it is a truism in psychotherapy that a crisis can be an extremely fruitful opportunity. During a crisis, the psyche is "laid open," much like a body opened up by the surgeon's knife. The superficiality of mere coping or "bumbling along" is effaced, and the "unreality" beneath it all is exposed.

And in being exposed, it evokes a longing for the Light, for healing and wholeness. Truly, the darker the night, the brighter the day. Although this is not a hard and fast rule, since the spirit "blows where it will," countless saints will attest to this pattern.

If God is "completely Himself" -- or, in Thomist terms, pure act -- I wonder if this means that Hell might be thought of as pure motion, or a kind of infinite potential that never attains itself? It remind me of what economists used to say about Brazil: it is the country of the future, and always will be.

This suggests that Hell is a place of "false infinity," again analogous to the auto-cannibalistic deconstructionist who must eventually dine on himself, the only thing left standing after everything else has been deconstructed.

Thus, the deconstructionist is both "omniscient," in that he can trump all knowledge, but "omnipotent," in that his single intellectual tool can reduce anything to dust. Again, if nothing is what it is, then everything is what it is not, which is to say, nothing. That would be Hell.

Upton is on the same page, where she notes that "a destructive psychological complex ends by destroying itself." Here again, this is an inverted image of the "creative destruction" involved in ego transcendence. Taking a wrecking ball to a structure in order to build a new one is not the same as flying an airplane into it just to please one's dictatorial mind parasites.

Note that one -- and only one -- civilization created human flight in order to facilitate further creation. But the other culture -- which, left alone, couldn't have invented the toaster -- can only parasitize ours, and use its creativity for destructive ends. The Arab world as presently constituted is a symphony of rump trumpets.

Another orthoparadoxical fact is that "as deeper levels of Hell are reached, the damned have more character -- understandably, since the more grievous sins are the more deliberate ones, which are worse than simple passions or weaknesses" -- the latter of which are more contingent to the central self.

But for the true evil-doer, the condensed nothingness of evil has become central, which is why an Osama, or Arafat, or Ahmadinejad, or Hitler, have such character. For truly, they are incorrigible but also incorruptible, in the sense that they will not deviate from their anti-principles, so no Light reaches them.

28 comments:

Shat Al Arab, yes...
said...

The Arabs came up with Al Jabr, or algebra. Arguably they helped create human flight by facilitating the development of calculus.

The Arabs look like hopeless boobies when it comes to self government and the advancement of wealth and security, and indeed it is possible that only people of Saxon heritage knows how to govern properly.

Still, the past shows the Arab is not a complete basket case.

One might find things to admire in the Arab culture, such as their anti-crime efforts which do result in a low per capita murder rate. We would do well to study up on how this is accomplished.

Well, first of all it is Ø, which means that it is not something positive, but rather, the negation of O, whatever that might mean.

Speaking of which, in regard to Arab/ Muslim culture, it's notable that wherever they take control they don't simply erect their own mosques and leave pre-existing churches, synagogues, temples and works of art alone. Rather, they either destroy them entirely (as in the Bamyan Buddhas), or symbolically by transforming them into Muslim places of worship (for instance, Hagia Sophia). Remaking the world in the image of Ø is their explicit goal.

Along similar lines in reference to the West, and referring to Mizze's post this morning (on yesterday's thread) about the Northwestern class demonstration involving things that would dump me in the spam file again, DC has this to say:

"It fell to the modern era to have the privilege of corrupting the humble."

Another little thing makes sense. So deconstruction is basically a virtue when you are in Hell, since Hell is the realm of false constructs.

The vertically inverted - the upside down people - will then seek to deconstruct reality and hold on to unreality, in the mirror image of the seeker of eternity who must deconstruct illusion and hold on to the eternally real.

Arab culture is in general pretty messed up. Nonetheless that says nothing about individuals. Just as America's cultural superiority (in most ways) in no way precludes the existence of many Bill Mahers, Arab culture in no way precludes the existence of people like my friend A., who is an Arab Maronite and as fine a person as I've met anywhere.

I know the above is self-evident to raccoons, but I always feel the need to throw those two cents in anyhow.

Over on Facebook, Prager posted a link to the recent example of dissipation at Northwestern University. Here's one of the comments. (It has 20 'likes'.)

Cheryl: I earned my B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, then completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Ivy League medical schools.

What is my profession now? Professional PHOTOGRAPHER (with no formal training) and I am happier than I've ever been in my life!

Although we have savings accounts set up for our childrens' formal education (ages 6 and 10) I am already pushing trade schools as an option...become a chef, for example...learn a SKILL.

I look back and see how I was indoctrinated into liberalism (and anti-religion) during my years as a scientist, and I was absolutely miserable. I voted Democrat and followed the "liberal party line" and denounced spirituality as I was "supposed" to do.

Then I had enough, joined the U.S. Navy (at age 32!) and I praise God every day for showing me a way out of the darkness of liberalism.

I hope I can steer our children from being sucked into the liberal abyss I had no idea I had descended into before it was too late.

A mistake was committed sometime in the past when some idiots told women they were able to make money like men and could equal men in most ways.

Women took it as the truth and behaved accordingly. They are weak-minded so if you tell them to go out and make money, then they will without question. Tell them they do not need a man, and they will believe that too.

So, be careful what you tell women. They are gullible and lack common sense. They do not know their place but must be reminded constantly what the boundaries are.

The same with college students. They think they matter somehow. Parents must cut off the funding when they because dissident.

The adult male is dominant and must take care to assert that dominance so that society remains properly ordered.

And for you women reading this blog, for shame. This is men's stuff here. Go look at something else.

What About Bob?

Who spirals down the celestial firepole on wings of slack, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks upin a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling? Who, haloed be his gnome, loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey? Who, with his doppelgägster and testy snideprick, Cousin Dupree, wields the pliers and blowtorch of fine insultainment for the ridicure of assouls? Who is the gentleman loaffeur who yoinks the sword from the stoned philosopher and shoves it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure? Whose New Testavus for the Restavus blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges and sheds a beam of intense darkness on the world enigma? Who is the Biggest Fakir of the Vertical Church of God Knows What, channeling the roaring torrent of 〇 into the feeble stream of cyberspace? Who is the masked pandit who lobs the first water balloon out the motel window at the annual Raccoon convention? Who is your nonlocal partner in disorganized crimethink? Shut your mouth! But I'm talkin' about bʘb! Then we can dig it!

Goround ZerO:

The Cosmic Area Rug:

The empty center is Beyond-Being. The circles are dimensions of Being. Your life is a path for the Spirit to pass from periphery to center. Thoughts and choices -- truth and virtue -- are the paving stones.

Only Error is Transmitted:

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Fuck You: War

Late last night, in search of light, I watched a ball of fire streak across the midnight sky. I watched it glow, then grow, then shrink, then sink into the silhouette of morning. As I watched it die, I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got a lot in common with that light.’ That’s right. I’m alive with the fire of my life, which streaks across my span of time and is seen by those who lift their eyes in search of light to help them though the long, dark night. --Nilsson

We see that yesterday is our birthday, today is our life, and tomorrow we are gone. So we have just one day to learn all we need to know, and that day is today. --Petey